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We are in the process of conducting a set of tests looking at how the performance of Ubuntu Linux has evolved through their Long-Term Support (LTS) releases beginning with their first 6.06 "Dapper Drake" version followed by Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron", and then the Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" release that will be released by month's end. These benchmarks will look at how the performance of Ubuntu Linux has changed over the past four years, but first we deviated from our original plans to get a look at how the current open-source ATI R500 graphics driver in Ubuntu 10.04 provided by the Mesa stack performs against older proprietary ATI Catalyst drivers.

"There are lots of evil things that proprietary software companies might do. Companies put their own profit above the rights and freedoms of their users, and to that end, much can be done that subjugates users. Even as someone who avoids proprietary software, I still read many proprietary license agreements (mainly to see how bad they are)."

The ARM Cortex-A8 achieves surprisingly competitive performance across many integer-based benchmarks while consuming power at levels far below the most energy miserly x86 CPU, the Intel Atom. In fact, the ARM Cortex-A8 matched or even beat the Intel Atom N450 across a significant number of our integer-based tests, especially when compensating for the Atom’s 25 percent clock speed advantage. However, the ARM Cortex-A8 sample that we tested in the form of the Freescale i.MX515 lived in an ecosystem that was not competitive with the x86 rivals in this comparison. The video subsystem is very limited. Memory support is a very slow 32-bit, DDR2-200MHz.

This comes up in discussions almost every new project I work on, because it's a very important thing to consider when designing a database. When deciding when and how to create an index in your MySQL database, it's important to consider how the data is being used.

This is the Dreambox, a Linux powered price winning digital television receiver. While it may not look like much at first, wait till you hear what special features it supports (some unofficially) ... Many Dreambox owners use these softcams together with special software for card sharing. Card sharing is when you buy one card for pay-tv and share de decryption codes generated by the card over the network.

A beta of the Firefox “Lorentz” project is now available for download and public testing. Firefox “Lorentz” takes the out of process plugins work from Mozilla Developer Previews and builds it on top of Firefox 3.6.3. This beta offers uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when a problem causes a crash in any Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugin instance. If a plugin crashes or freezes when using Firefox “Lorentz”, it will not affect the rest of Firefox. Users can submit a plugin crash report, and then reload the page to restart the plugin and try again.

Earlier this week it was made public that IBM had levied patent infringement allegations against French company TurboHercules and its mainframe emulator. A letter signed by IBM VP and technology officer Mark S. Anzani and addressed to TurboHercules co-founder Roger Bowler detailed the more than 170 patents the company allegedly infringed upon. The problem: two of the patents in question were part of a 500-patent access pledge made by IBM in 2005.

It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD. As you know he recently claimed that IBM had violated its public pledge not to sue Linux for patent infringement. I think he's mistaken. IBM, when it announced the patent pledge, specifically reserved the right to defend itself from attack: "IBM has no intention of asserting its patent portfolio against the Linux kernel, unless of course we are forced to defend ourselves," said Nick Donofrio, senior vice president for technology and manufacturing, drawing applause in a speech at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. And in the TurboHercules story, who is suing whom? It's not IBM, folks. The complaint against IBM was filed with the EU Commission by TurboHercules. At that exact moment, did they not take themselves out from under the patent pledge's safety umbrella?

The recent attacks on IBM patent use by some in the open-source community are way out of line. First things first, I hate software patents as much as the next open-source supporter, but the recent claims that IBM has betrayed open-source with recent patent claims are way over the top. If it were just one person throwing mud at IBM I wouldn't bother with responding to this, but with many other open-source advocates are jumping with both feet on IBM over the issue, I have to address it.

One Netlive DVD is enough to bring Linux to all the computers in a lab without installing anything on them. In this interview the Netlive developers explain to all ICT teachers and their principals why they may love Netlive

There are more and more Laptops nowadays which do not have a CD/DVD-ROM facility build in but are able to boot from USB memory stick. This small guide provides all needs on how to create a bootable USB memory stick to install a Debian without a need for CD/DVD drive.

Law firms that supported continued software patents have published critiques of the arguments put forward by those who opposed software patents and asked for an exclusion to be added to the Patent Bill. In this article Peter Harrison, vice President of the NZOSS responds.

After forty years in the commercial computing business, the one idea that has been drilled into me by security professionals is the fact that there is no such thing as a secure computer system, only levels of insecurity. Therefore the cost of keeping the information and system secure has to be balanced with the cost of losing that information or system, or having it damaged. Unfortunately the speed and availability of the Internet combined with the low cost of very powerful computers and network services have made the cost of “cracking” go down and the cost of “securing” go up.

As enterprises move to the cloud, the need for monitoring and management of applications will become increasingly important. A new effort from a pair of commercial open source vendors is now ramping up to take on that cloud management challenge. Cloud technology vendor Eucalyptus System is partnering with networking monitoring vendor GroundWork Open Source in a new beta effort called GroundWork Monitor Enterprise Cloud. The new cloud solution aims to provide enhanced cloud monitoring and management capabilities.

Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 2 doesn't come with drastic visual changes, but there are quite a few minor improvements and tweaks. In this post I'll try to cover all the changes made since Beta 1. If you've installed Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Alpha or Beta 1 and kept upgrading, you already have all the changes in this post. If not, here is what's new (visually) in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx Beta 2:

While it’s hard to make the claim that there aren’t enough Linux distros out there, it’s also hard to escape the fact that no distribution is all things to all people. There are all kinds of reasons to consider rolling your own, but many people never make the attempt because it seems like such a huge undertaking. Fortunately, with modern software we can create new distros, remixes, and custom configurations in a matter of minutes instead of months. Here, we’ll showcase some of the current software tools that make this so easy.

The Linux Foundation's CEO, Jim Zemlin, has published a statement from IBM's Daniel Frye in which he reasserts IBM's patent pledge. Zemlin says, on the basis of this statement "Fortunately, all of us can breathe easy - IBM remains true to their word". Frye says that "IBM stands by this 2005 Non-Assertion Pledge as strongly as it did then. IBM will not sue for the infringement of any of those 500 patents by any Open Source Software".

MySQL has an interesting architecture that sets it apart from some other enterprise database systems. It allows you to plug in different modules to handle storage. What that means to end users is that it is quite flexible, offering an interesting array of different storage engines with different features, strengths, and tradeoffs. In Survey of MySQL Storage Engines, we discussed some of the more common storage engines, MyISAM the default, InnoDB, Archive, Merge, Memory, CSV and NDB. This time we'll cover some of the newest and more exotic storage engines, and even some that are still in development.

The past weeks gave me much to think about with regards to the future of Linux. Every year we always hear that “this is the year of Linux Desktop” and yet are surprised that nothing has changed from the years prior. Sure Linux is growing on the end user base but it is a very small growth; almost unnoticeable.

Ubuntu developers invented Upstart as a replacement for the hoary old SysV init system, with the aim of meeting the complex demands of booting modern Linux systems. Upstart is being adopted by Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE. Akkana Peck introduces us to this Ubuntu success story.